Chapter 5 Ugly Ducklings The Unattractiveness Stall "Are you Isabel?" "Are you Rodney?" "Yes, I'm Rodney!" "Well, I'm not Isabel!" --Rodney Dangerfield meets a blind date Our senses are finely tuned to react positively to what we like and are accustomed to and to react negatively to anything that looks, smells, tastes, feels, or sounds different. The reactions based on these senses can be so strong that we never consciously evaluate the pros and cons of what is being experienced. In an increasingly complex world, organizations run the danger of overlooking great opportunities right under their noses and in front of their eyes because the opportunities do not fit the conventional ideal. By reversing the usual approach, you can reap great rewards by investigating the potential of what repels you and what you reject without adequate consideration. First Impressions Can Be Deceiving Most people can identify situations in their lives in which they dismissed an opportunity that someone else capitalized on later. Often, these opportunities were overlooked or rejected because they were perceived as dull, boring, or unpleasant. You may recall the tale of The Ugly Duckling. It is the story of a cast-off baby bird that is mistreated because it is unattractive to the young ducklings raised with it. Much to everyone's surprise, the duckling matures to become a beautiful swan. Thus, what we call the unattractiveness stall prevents people from seeing the potential that is often right under their noses because they possess preconceived judgments based on insufficient knowledge. Taking an example from farming, kernels of corn can become infected with fungi and turn smutty: The kernels grow as large as your thumb to the first joint, are black or grayish white, and are as soft and squishy as an overripe banana. Farmers dread grabbing smutty ears while they are husking corn. Smut is so disgusting it has even given its name to pornography. On the other hand, gourmet cooks will pay a premium for smutty ears of corn. They make smut into gustatory delights in puddings and pies. The discerning chef is busting an unattractiveness stall. It is worth remembering that if Alexander Fleming had been unwilling to work with the unpleasant green mold that affects stale bread and many other foods, the world might not have the wonder drug, penicillin. It is equally instructive to note that Fleming had so many false starts in his early experiments that his fellow British scientists ridiculed him. But he persevered. Few of his critics earned half the honors Fleming was to garner. He won the Nobel Prize for penicillin. And his former detractors found themselves calling him Sir Alexander after he was knighted by his queen. But how do you feel about pond scum? Maybe you should look beneath its surface appearance. The nutritional supplement, blue-green algae, is freeze-dried from a particular type of freshwater algae that many would perceive as pond scum. New medical research shows that this natural whole food stimulates the body's immune system to resist disease more than any other food or drug ever tested. Also, mental processes and nervous system functioning substantially improved in the latest medical tests. Many more medical trials are underway, because other health benefits are likely. You also absorb more vitamins and minerals than from any other food you can eat in comparable quantities. Improving your health by eating better can be a 2,000 percent solution and make it easier for you to locate other 2,000 percent solutions. Doctor Edna Aphek of Tel-Hi Networks, Ltd., in Jerusalem, also thinks people should be trained to consider possible uses for things that are viewed as bad or dirty, like mold and mildew or even unexpected results. She notes that in research projects, unexpected things happen. Even to a scientist, the unexpected can seem ugly at first glance. You can foster creativity by studying the unattractive for hidden usefulness. Don't Take My Picture, I'll Break the Camera The Taj Mahal All too frequently, management becomes engrossed in creating posh office space. Securities analysts consider it a bad sign when executives build lavish corporate offices that are remote from the operations. Corporate castles waste precious capital. They also waste precious management time. Having feathered their nests, executives avoid the ugly duckling sites that need attention. A serious mistake. For example, the distribution system is often considered an ugly duckling in the eyes of pampered executives who would rather focus on alluring new products than fret about trucking schedules and inventory control. Yet time spent refining the system of trucking, shipping, and warehouses can be golden. Wal-Mart struck gold by focusing on fast deliveries through warehouses serving constellations of stores. With cross-docking, goods are continuously delivered to Wal-Mart facilities to be repacked and dispatched to stores in forty-eight hours or less, often without ever sitting in inventory. As a result, Wal-Mart can reduce prices and attract more value-seeking customers. The Ivory Tower Executives dislike having to deal with customer complaints. In fact, very few top-level executives will talk directly with customers. CEOs like to send complaints to the employee in a position to resolve the matter. Sounds reasonable. But a few CEOs who do talk directly with disgruntled customers say doing so is one of their most valuable ways of staying on top of things. And since most CEOs avoid customer gripes, is it any wonder that company employees dread bringing their CEOs bad news? No one wants to approach the ivory tower with disturbing information. You will recall that in ancient times, the bearer of bad tidings often paid with his life. So workers often sugarcoat the news or badly conceal it. Stallbusters thrive by reporting bad news along with positive ways of dealing with it. Stall Erasers Ugly Is in the Eye of the Beholder One innovative CEO ran a successful restaurant business. He would start his daily tour in the least attractive location: at the dumpster in the back of each unit. He knew that the content of the trash was a key barometer of the restaurant's health. Decaying raw food suggested that the manager was overordering. Occasionally he actually found carefully wrapped, fresh prime steaks. He knew that game plan all too well. A dishonest employee would stash them there for recovery after dark to be taken home or resold for cash. By facing unpleasant aspects of his business, this CEO obtained useful information that could not be found anywhere else. Floored You need a different mind-set to think of packaged materials as two valuable items: the goods and the container they come in. The container is the ugly duckling, something that serves its purpose and is thrown in the trash, right? Whoa! Crafty Henry Ford dealt from a position of strength in his negotiations with the battery producer for his Model-A automobile (Exhibit 5-1). He was the almighty to suppliers dependent on his business for their success. So Ford could dictate tight specifications for the wooden boxes in which the supplier shipped the batteries. After Ford's assembly-line worker carefully removed the screws holding the box together and lowered the battery onto a shelf under the steering wheel, he then fitted the pieces of the battery box over the battery and screwed them down. Ford got floorboards, too! Once you know what you are looking for, the ugly ducklings offer some of the easiest opportunities to identify and exploit. The crucial task is seeing past the negative to discover the positive. This means forsaking conventional thinking. Stallbusters Distinguishing between an unattractiveness stall and something that is just plain ugly may not be easy, but looking for the buried treasure can turn up a 2,000 percent solution for you. We are going to take an in-depth look at a company that not only finds its own ugly ducklings and turns them into swans but has also made a successful business of doing this for others. You can do the same. In fact, you should. Find Ugly Ducklings The easiest way to find out if your company is experiencing its own unattractiveness stall is to seek out the least pleasant sites in your company. Where are the places that executives and managers seldom visit? Here's a tip: The ugliest, dirtiest, least appealing parts of any business are the places where goods and services are produced for customers. Such facilities usually include manufacturing plants, distribution centers, customer warehouses, and local service centers. It is the rare executive who will take the time to visit these places to seek ways to improve production or service. Executives and managers are more likely to hold meetings with employees in the cafeteria. Or they speak with workers remotely by teleconference from their office sanctuaries. An interesting example of finding ugly ducklings can be observed in the Servicemaster Company, which provides a variety of mundane services typically required in unattractive locations, such as janitorial services and plumbing repairs. Chairman C. W. Pollard seeks out unattractive sites and even arranges to spend time while traveling to observe other janitorial services around the world. The company now does over $4 billion in annual revenues in such activities, which proves that looking where others do not for opportunity can be a big growth area. What can be learned by visiting those unattractive places? Servicemaster executives and salespeople often find that the employees in those locations are poorly trained, do not have the right kind of equipment, and see themselves in dead-end jobs. A visit may also find facilities that are dirty, dangerous, and below standard in a variety of ways because of weak janitorial services. Reports about such unvisited areas may come as a surprise to the organization's executives. The response may be that janitorial services are already outsourced. But how well are the costs and effectiveness of those services monitored? It is not unusual for a national contract to provide these services from Servicemaster at a fraction of the cost of using local providers, some of whom may be providing kickbacks to the employees who hired them. Which potential customers are perpetually shunned? For Servicemaster, the answer would be "almost no one." The company is very interested in developing human potential, wherever that may be. In fact, the worse the mess, the bigger the opportunity for Servicemaster to make a difference. For that reason, the company especially likes to work in hospitals and other health care locations where cleanliness can make a large difference in people's lives. Which kinds of potential employees are never hired? Servicemaster has learned that almost anyone can become an effective employee when properly trained, managed, and supported. By comparison, most companies have a very long list of the kinds of employees who are never hired. Which suppliers are avoided? Servicemaster makes it a company policy to operate in a manner that matches the highest possible personal ethics and morality. An unethical or unreliable supplier would not do well with Servicemaster. That restriction is probably one that Servicemaster's customers heartily endorse. What services are avoided? To date, Servicemaster has restricted itself to a few types of services. One reason for this is that until recently, the company was a master limited partnership. As a limited partnership, it was difficult for Servicemaster to raise capital for expansion into new fields and make acquisitions using equity funds (the company did not have a common stock until 1998). With the availability of common stock for acquisitions, stock issues to pay down excessive debt left over from the master limited partnership, Servicemaster seems to be focusing much more now on new types of services where its expertise can pay off. Turn Your Ugly Ducklings Into Swans How can you learn more about these areas in an open-minded way? Servicemaster usually does this by having an on-site visit by one of the company's most experienced people in that service area. The company has also developed a series of objective ways to measure the quality of what is going on at the site, whether the work is being done by your company, another vendor, or Servicemaster personnel. Who already sees these ugly ducklings as swans? Why? Those in Servicemaster who would see the opportunities are those familiar with that activity (whether it be janitorial, plumbing, pest control, or disaster recovery). Servicemaster has probably missed a number of opportunities where the company could learn to perform well. For example, many manufacturing facilities have more maintenance people than factory workers. Maintenance is often a problem area, much like janitorial, plumbing, and pest control. A sign of this problem is that each division in Servicemaster used to compete for its own accounts, using its own salespeople and data. Recently, the company realized that by combining telemarketing activities, sales could be made for more of the company's services at lower costs. This will also probably expand the awareness of the need to solve other problems faced by plant managers, school managers, and hospital and nursing home administrators. How could each of these ugly ducklings be one of your best opportunities? As Servicemaster becomes more customer-oriented, the company will inevitably try to add new types of customers. To the extent that these customers (such as malls and suburban office parks) have different needs, we should expect that Servicemaster will begin to realize that diversifying its customer types is a key ingredient to capturing new ways to grow successfully. Any one of these new customer types could cause the company to grow rapidly and profitably in a whole new direction. Who could help you to better see, hear, and feel these opportunities? Senior management of Servicemaster would do well to spend a substantial portion of its time visiting new types of potential customers, observing what their problems are, what types of solutions are working and which are not, and identifying factors that will allow one company to be more successful in serving these needs than another company. This approach should be dovetailed into a corporate strategy activity to determine what capabilities the company must have to serve the needs of new types of customers. For example, Servicemaster may have a great opportunity to become a one-stop shop for services that people need at home. The company already provides some lawn care and pest control services. Wouldn't it be nice to have a company you can rely on to do all of the simple maintenance around your house at a reasonable cost, the kind of service that condominium owners usually receive from their condominium management company? How could you easily and inexpensively test out ideas related to the worth of these areas? Since Servicemaster is a large, successful company, it could decide to make local acquisitions in markets where it wants to test expanded services and expanded service concepts. If the tests fail, the businesses could probably be resold to local entrepreneurs who want to be in a narrow-line service business. If the acquisitions were made near the end of a recession, the businesses might even be sold later at a profit when business conditions improved, should the company decide to exit its local test. Quotes / Reviews || Excerpt || About Us || Speaking for You || Services || Buy the Book || Master Process || Stall Reports || Newsletter || Job Search || E-Mail a Friend || Contact Us || Mitchell On Tour || 2000 Percent Puns || Home Copyright 1999, 2000 Mitchell and Company Mitchell and Company Developed and maintained by Interactive Media Advertising Group, Inc.